It was never hard to spot Jacob Pullen on the floor during a Kansas State game. He was the four-year guard with lethal long-distance range and a Gimme The Damn Ball look in crunch time.

It’s not hard to pick him out of a crowd on the streets of Barcelona, where he signed with one of Europe’s top clubs a year ago, either. Pullen, fresh off of practice, moves slowly in a purple sweatshirt and gray sweatpants. His trademark beard, which falls about an inch below his chin, looks just as it did the day he last stepped on the court for K-State.

We’ve planned to meet at 9 p.m. at the Hard Rock Cafe in downtown Barcelona. He arrives right on time, but the long wait for a table there doesn’t seem worth it to him. “I know another good place,” he says. “They like me there.”

He leads us to a crowded restaurant nearby, only we’re seated quickly—upstairs, away from much of the noise where my tape recorder has a prayer. Pullen orders for both of us in Spanish, a tool he’s sharpened since arriving in Spain. Then again, maybe it needs a little more refining.

“I don’t know what that is,” Pullen, perplexed, says as a plate of something he did not mean to order is placed between us. “I’ve never had that.”

We fixate our attention on the mysterious plate. It appears to me to be a beef jerky-ish dish. Pullen disagrees. Perhaps thinly-sliced dried fruit?

No matter. Pullen bravely takes a bite and survives. “It’s not bad,” he assures me. By the time I timidly nibble on a piece, he’s already jumped back into our old conversation.

“That was the toughest loss I’ve ever had, man. I wanted to go to the Final Four so bad. It was the only thing I ever wanted.”

***

For a gifted 24-year-old, Pullen has a long hoops story to tell. Growing up around Chicago and playing against the likes of Iman Shumpert and Patrick Beverley, it wasn’t easy for Pullen to make a name for himself as a high-schooler. A late bloomer by his own admission, he figured he was destined for a low-DI school until a strong Nike All-American camp put him on higher ground. Teams like Marquette and Oklahoma suddenly showed interest.

He also managed to catch the attention of Dalonte Hill, an assistant at Kansas State. Hill asked then-fellow assistant Frank Martin to give Pullen a look, and Martin obliged. Unsurprisingly, it turned into a classic love-at-first-sight tale. Sort of.

“The first time he touched it, he shot an airball that missed the rim by six feet,” Martin recalls over the phone. “But he got down, guarded the guy that was bringing the ball up the floor, created a turnover, ran down, took the next shot and buried a three. I said, I like that kid.”

When Pullen showed up to school months later, he had neither mega-hype nor a guaranteed starting spot. He’d have to earn his minutes in practice going against a freshman who did carry some celebrity status, Michael Beasley. The dominant forward was accompanied by a fast-rising, high-flying redshirt freshman who had generated substantial buzz as well: Bill Walker.

“I played against Mike so much in AAU that we kinda had a rivalry before we got to K-State,” Walker recently told SLAM. “Out of mutual respect, I think we chose to play together in college because of those battles.”

The friendly rivalry only grew more intense under coach Martin.

“We never had a good practice unless you put one on the other to make ‘em mad,” Pullen begins, referring to the Wildcats’ two superstars. “The minute one scored on the other one, that was the best practice you’ll ever see us have. ‘Cause they would go at it all practice. Michael would score and say, ‘Bill I’m gonna get 200 today, you can’t guard me!’ Bill would just come down and dunk on him. I remember having practices where they were on the same team, they would sub out, and sit on the sideline and eat sunflower seeds! Spittin’ in the cup eating sunflower seeds while we’re practicing, you know, just running up and down.”

Pullen must have made a little noise in practice, too, because he opened his freshman season as coach Martin’s starting point guard. His debut couldn’t have gone much better: 18 points and 5 dimes in a blowout win against Sacramento State.

***

Between January 18, 1994 and January 29, 2008, the Kansas Jayhawks held a 35-1 record over the Wildcats. On January 30 of ’08, No. 2 Kansas marched into their matchup with No. 22 Kansas State confident that the result would be a lot more of the same. But these were Michael Beasley and Bill Walker’s Wildcats, and their school was sick of playing second fiddle.

That night, Beasley and Walker each shot 9-18 from the floor and combined for 47 points. The team built a two-possession lead with over a minute left, when a 6-foot-nothin’ point guard from Maywood, IL, nailed home a pair of backbreaking free throws. Pullen, the finisher, shot 10-10 from the stripe on his way to 20 points in the W. (1:40 below)

Led by Beasley and Walker, Kansas State started that ’07-08 season with an 18-6 record. The team stumbled late, though, and entered March Madness as a No. 11 seed. They were able to quickly upset OJ Mayo’s Trojans, but fell to Wisconsin the following game in the Round of 32.

Pullen scored just four points in 22 minutes against the Badgers. That June, Beasley was selected second overall by the Heat, and Walker by the Celtics 35 slots later.

“I always think about the possibilities of us staying together,” says Walker, reflecting on the dozens of K-State wins and trio of tournament runs left on the board after he and Beasley declared.

The following season, with the team largely broken up, its biggest stars stolen by the NBA, Kansas State struggled to find a groove. The team didn’t qualify for the NCAA Tournament and was eliminated in the second round of the NIT tourney by San Diego State. Pullen scored just 3 points to close out what had been an otherwise solid sophomore campaign.

Instead of rolling into Year Three of the Beasley/Walker/Pullen trio, K-State was unranked entering the 2009-10 season.

Pullen didn’t like the sound of that.

The Wildcats cracked the top-25 in both the AP and coaches’ polls just over a month into the season, and closed the year as the consensus No. 7. Pullen and Dennis Clemente formed a dynamite backcourt, and they found a gem in big man Curtis Kelly, a Junior transfer from UConn.

In March of 2010, Kansas State earned a No. 2 seed in the same NCAA tournament that had eluded them the previous season.

The team rolled into a Sweet 16 matchup with Jordan Crawford’s Xavier squad. In a marathon of a game, Pullen pulled off the following three plays:

23.6 seconds left in regulation. Pullen for three. 70-67 Kansas State.32.9 seconds left in the first OT. Pullen layup. 86-84 Kansas State.31.2 seconds left in the second OT. Pullen for three. 97-94 Kansas State.

His final bucket iced the game. Clemente and Kelly combined for 48 points themselves, and, for the first time in his career, Pullen was on to the Elite 8.

There, though, he ran into an upstart Butler team spearheaded by Gordon Hayward and Shelvin Mack destined for a title appearance. The lost opportunity still stings Pullen.

“My junior year, that was the best team we had,” Pullen declares. But fatigue wore on the team following its battle against Xavier. The Wildcats shot just 38.5 percent from the floor against Butler. It cemented another season of heartbreak for Kansas State, and altered Pullen’s career path.

“If we would have made it to the final four my junior year, I woulda entered,” Pullen explains. “Everybody said, Oh you woulda been a late-first round, second-round pick your junior year, you had a great year, and all of that. I just wanted to go back to school man.”

***

Three full years and one month after the Wildcats’ monumental upset over Kansas, the two teams matched up again. This time, Kansas was ranked No. 1 in the country. This time, Kansas was dealing with Pullen’s Wildcats.

Kansas State was again unranked when the game tipped off. The No. 1 team in the NCAA facing off against an unranked opponent usually ends up as a laugher.

Only nobody was laughing as the game wore on. Unless you count the always-expressive Pullen, who must have had some fun dropping 38 on the Jayhawks’ collective heads in a shocking blowout home victory.

K-State’s strong finish earned them a No. 5 seed in the 2011 Dance, where they knocked off Utah State in the first round. Round 2 brought a matchup with Wisconsin, and in it a shot for revenge, three years after Wisco bounced K-State to end Pullen’s freshman year.

The performance, masterful as it was, would go down as his final act for Kansas State. Led by a more balanced scoring attack, Wisconsin cold-heartedly sent Pullen into the world of Draft experts, game-tape nitpickers and, ultimately, the true hardwood. Or so we thought.

***

“The crying shame is that Jacob went out his senior year and dominated college basketball coming down the stretch—set a career-high in the last game he ever played, set the school record for points in a career in the last game he ever played—and yet he went from possible late-first, early-second to not being drafted at all,” coach Martin, now at South Carolina, complained to SLAM while channeling much of the emotion he’s become famous for.

Pullen, a student of the game’s sometimes-ugly business end, was far less bothered by the outcome. He understood well that only first-round picks immediately earn guaranteed contracts in the NBA. As the 2012 Draft slipped into its second round, he decided it was best to go unselected.

“I didn’t want someone to control my rights, and send me to a bad team in Europe or the D-League,” Pullen reasons. “A D-League player makes at the best about $20,000 before taxes. You could work at McDonald’s and make more money than that for a whole year.”

Instead of being selected into uncertainty, Pullen took his talents to Italy for a season, followed by a year in Israel. Finally, in August of last year, he wound up with the team Martin has enthusiastically titled “the L.A. Lakers of Europe.”

His long-distance ventures have earned him a secondary perk. Pullen met a number of American players abroad. One such player was in Milan and earning 1.5 million euros annually while averaging 3 points and 1.5 assists per game. Naturally, Pullen wondered how those numbers added up.

The player’s contract stemmed from a law which varies in degree from country-to-country, but establishes a limit on the number of American players a European team can have on its roster. As Pullen detailed, international leagues know that all-American rosters would play top-notch ball, but also irritate home fans.

Some clubs don’t love the rule and try to get around it. If an American player owns a European passport, he can technically be counted as a European on the roster. It’s beneficial to both the team, which maintains the right to sign a different American, and the player, who gains leverage in contract negotiations.

“You look at good teams, and they find a way to get Americans,” Pullen begins. “Most of the times it’s with a passport. That’s a smart thing to do.”

Pullen briefly caught on with the Suns back in the summer of 2012. In Phoenix, he crossed paths with Igor Kokoškov, an assistant coach who also ran the Georgian national team.

“He asked me if I wanted to join the team and get a passport, and I was like, Yeah,” Pullen recalls. “Now every high-level team in Europe will sign me ‘cause I have a [non-US] passport. A [non-US] passport is a lot of money over here. You get one of those things, you’re like gold, man—everybody wants you.”

Pullen’s skills haven’t hurt his chances of signing a lucrative contract, either. He broke the Spanish single-game three-point record with 12 in March. His Barcelona club reached the Eurobasket Final Four in May, but fell to Madrid in the semi-finals.

Pullen’s one-year deal with the team is up, but he expects to sign a new multi-year contract. And why shouldn’t he?

“I do my homework, man,” Pullen says with a smile. “I got a three-bedroom condo here with a hot tub and a grill in the back to myself. It’s 70 degrees most of the year. I really can’t complain.”

During the NBA lockout, Joey Dorsey crossed the Atlantic Ocean to continue his professional basketball career. The former Memphis Tiger who spent parts of three seasons in the League signed with Caja Laboral in the Spanish League before being acquired by Greek powerhouse Olympiacos soon after.

Playing alongside former first-round pick Acie Law, Dorsey would help Olympiacos win the 2012 Euroleague and Greek championships. It was the first time in 15 years that Olympiacos won either title.

After a stop in Turkey, playing for Royal Hali Gaziantep, Dorsey was then signed by Ricky Rubio’s old squad—FC Barcelona in Spain. Teamed up with former Grizzlie Juan Carlos Navarro, Dorsey has emerged as a cult hero of sorts overseas. He’s winning fans over with his passion defensively and thunderous finishes at the rim.

Though he received interest from multiple teams around the NBA this past summer, Dorsey has found a new home in Europe. He told SLAM recently that the experience overseas has been eye-opening, helping him grow tremendously as a player and person. We talked about all that as well as Barcelona’s push toward a championship when we caught up with Dorsey earlier this week.

SLAM: Your Barcelona team just won four straight games including three straight in the Euroleague Top 16. Can you talk about the run you’ve been on lately?

Joey Dorsey: I think we’re just clicking as a team and as a unit at the right time. We understand everybody’s role on the team and everything like that, and it’s clicking for us. Guys know who is going to score and who is going to play defense to help us win, and we’re playing great team basketball at the right moment.

SLAM: There’s a YouTube video from December of you dancing out on the court with a Barcelona cheerleader. It’s pretty awesome, and the fans and your teammates seemed to have fun with it. What type of reaction did you get from that?

JD: [Laughs] Thanks man. That was crazy. A lot of guys on the team know that in my younger days, that’s all I used to do was dance. I love to dance. Outside of playing basketball, I like dance man. So it was Fan Day, and my teammates were like, “You can’t really do the Michael Jackson.” And I was like, Man, if you put it on I’ll do it. But I’m thinking, you know, they wasn’t going to really put it on. Or make it a dance competition against a cheerleader. But they did and I just went all out. I was like give me the glove too, let’s go.

SLAM: How has your role on the team evolved this season with Barcelona?

JD: When I was in Turkey, after I left Olympiacos, I wanted to develop my post game offensively. That was the whole reason I came to Europe, to develop my offense in the post and I had some success with that in Turkey. But as I get on these bigger teams, my role changes back to how I was playing at Olympiacos—and that’s rebounding and defense. My role is not to score the ball right now—it’s to get stops and rebound and that’s what my focus is.

SLAM: It seems like these fans really like you in Barcelona. How has it been playing for them?

JD: The fans in Barcelona are amazing. They’re behind our team 100 percent. And whenever I come out of the game they give me a standing ovation—which is crazy. The coaches are like, “Enjoy this, take this in, they don’t love that many people like this.” They’re always telling me, “Joey, the fans are obsessed with you. They love you.” And it’s just been amazing playing for them.

SLAM: They give you a standing ovation every time you come out of a game?

JD: Yeah, every time. It’s crazy.

SLAM: Why do you think that is?

JD: I think it’s just that they really appreciate my passion for the game and passion for winning. My coaches have told me that the fans are responding to my effort, how hard I play. And I can’t thank them enough for that.

SLAM: How about the day-to-day in Barcelona—how has it been living over there?

JD: I’m adjusting very well to it. Barcelona is a lot like Miami; I moved to Miami and was there a whole summer working out. The beach is nice here, the food is amazing and the people are really nice. They’re really genuine people.

SLAM: Do you have any family or friends overseas with you right now?

JD: My first year playing with Olympiacos, I was trying to talk to my Mom and get her to come over to Greece. She had never been to Europe before. My agent would get on the phone and talk to her and then one of the coaches talked to her a couple times also trying to get her to come. But she never came until this year. Finally, here she is in Barcelona now for the first time being in Europe. And it’s great to have her here with me.

SLAM: Do you ever think about how much the game has done for you and your family in that sense? Maybe you’re not in the NBA right now, but you got your Mom in Barcelona, Spain. That’s crazy, right?

JD: It really is amazing, man. Coming from Baltimore, you’d never think in a million years that I’d be traveling the world experiencing anything like this. Being in Barcelona, being in Athens, Greece, Turkey—all these places I never knew about growing up. Now my Mom is over here seeing Spain too and it’s a wonderful feeling. I’m so blessed.

JD: We were up by 20 points. I thought I was done for the game, I thought I wasn’t going back in. Then coach called me and said, “Come on Joey, finish the game.” And I was like, Seriously? He was like, “Yeah.” I was so angry, I was so mad. We were up 20 and it was the preseason. So I told the guys on the team, I said if I get a pass I’m going up and trying to break the backboard. They were like, nah. But then I got a behind-the-back pass from Pap (Kostas Papanikolau), which was amazing, and I was right there. I was by myself so I could go up with so much power and I broke it. It was crazy. I heard a clisshhkk sound. Then I heard, “Come on Joey, look what you did.” I looked back at the backboard and it was cracked and I was like, Wow.

SLAM: How often have you consciously tried to break a backboard like that in your life and how many have you broken in total?

JD: Every time I get a dunk by myself and there is nobody around to block my shot or alter my shot, I try to break the backboard. Every time. You ever see my go up and cock the ball back all the way behind my head, I’m trying to break the backboard. Because I know I have so much power from lifting so much over here—that’s all I do is stay in the gym. So the guys on my team are waiting for me break one this year in Barcelona. But that was the first one I broke in a real game. Dating back to my time in high school and Memphis until now, I broke five backboards. But that was the first one in a game.

SLAM: How often do you talk with those guys from your team at Memphis, Coach Calipari, Chris Douglas-Roberts, D-Rose?

JD: I talked to Cal this summer when I had my Nike Basketball Camp in Memphis. And actually I just talked with CDR last Wednesday to congratulate him for signing with the Bobcats for the whole year. So I keep in touch as much as I can. I haven’t talked to D-Rose in maybe a year or so but I talked to his brother recently and wished him well on a speedy recovery.

SLAM: What was winning that Euroleague championship like in 2012, living in Greece and playing for Olympiacos?

JD: When they brought me in, the coaches weren’t too big on the team. They’re like, we’re really not too concerned about Euroleague. We’re not sure we have much of a chance but we’re really trying to win this Greek League. They hadn’t won either in 15 years. I told them, Hold on coach; I’m here to championships. I’m not here for nothing else. They said, “Well if you can win us the Euroleague, then do it.” After that, Acie Law and I sat down and we talked. Then we talked to the other guys and that’s what we set out to do. We molded the guys into their roles and tried to make sure we were clicking all at the same time. That’s what we’re doing right now in Barcelona, too.

SLAM: How were those fans in Greece, what was the arena like when you won the title?

JD: Those fans are really amazing, too. I mean, the passion they have for winning. They’re amazing fans and they made me play so hard because they showed so much passion. The fans in Greece showed me they love basketball. In the States and in the NBA, the crowd loves dunks and everything like that. But all they wanted you to do is play hard in Greece. And when we won the Greek League at home? Oh my god it was crazy. They ripped off my jersey, it was crazy. Amazing feeling.

SLAM: How have you grown the most as a player since leaving the NBA?

JD: Since I left the League I learned so much about basketball. On the court and off the court. Shane Battier was a great teacher for me when I was in Houston. He used to tell me if you watch so much tape you can figure out your opponent. You can always have a hand up on your opponent. Once I got over here I just wanted be the best defender because that’s what I was known for—rebounding and defense. I’ve tried to do what they need me to do in the middle, block shots, rebound and stop the best offensive player in the low post. And I’ve been watching a lot of film to do that.

SLAM: What did Battier show you about watching film that made such an impact?

JD: Shane would guard Kobe with the Rockets. So to do that, Shane would look at his percentage, how many times Kobe would take one dribble left. What was his percentage going left, what was his percentage going right? Off the two dribbles and a step back, what did he do? When Shane showed me this, I knew I needed to make it part of my game. If I wanted to be a good defender, to stop an Al Jefferson or a DeMarcus Cousins in the paint, I needed to know what his move was and his counter-move. So that approach that Shane taught me is something I brought over here and it’s helped me out a lot.

SLAM: Is your goal to build off that and get back into the League, or are you looking to keep pursuing championships overseas?

JD: I’m not going to lie, man. There are so many people asking me that. Are you going to go back to the League? This summer, I was in touch with New Orleans and Orlando about coming to Summer League and everything. But I just love being in Europe. I have no worries over here. I’m playing well; I don’t have too much to worry about. Playing in the NBA, you got to worry about family issues, this and that, it’s so much drama. Over here I’m just at peace. I can play basketball and then just go home and relax.

SLAM: If you were to offer advice to a younger player for how to succeed overseas based on your experience, what would you say?

JD: This is the thing. Honestly, me and CDR when we were at Memphis, [Robert] Dozier, we all talked like, I’m not going to play in Europe. I’m not going overseas. We would look down at guys who played overseas because we knew we had a chance to go to the NBA. So I’d first let them know that playing overseas is not bad. It’s still the next level to get you to the NBA. It can get you to your dream, get you ready to succeed in the League. And I’m so glad that when the lockout happened, I came over here and started playing. It made me look at life different and it made me look at basketball different as a player and as a person. Just being over here, learning about different cultures, having experiences with different cultures. That’s what I’ve been telling younger players, you can always take a different route to reach your dreams.

Los Angeles Lakers star forward Pau Gasol — whose future is very much up in the air — says that when his NBA career winds down, he’d like to play for FC Barcelona again before he hangs up his sneakers for good. Per El Mundo (via EOB): “I don’t know when, but if one day I could return to FIBA basketball, I’d like to do it with Barcelona as long as I can play at a high level and being central to the team.”

The two brothers haven’t signed with the Spanish powerhouse, but they will train together during the lockout. From the LA Times: “[Pau] Gasol hadn’t formally decided how he’d keep himself busy during the lockout following the FIBA tournament, but he maintained he’d stay in his native Spain for however long the NBA work stoppage lasts. Gasol’s representatives haven’t returned multiple messages and emails regarding inquiries about his lockout plans, but his formal training with FC Barcelona would mark a reunion of sorts. He played there from 1998-2001 before entering the NBA. ‘For me @FCBarcelona is the best team in Europe,’ Gasol tweeted. ‘@MarcGasol and I are here to contribute even more to a group which is already excellent.’”

To Wolves fans, Rubio must feel like that pony they kept asking for (and never got) as children … but, hey, his family says he might sign next season (reportedly). From the Pioneer Press: “A little birdie says the Timberwolves have received word from Ricky Rubio’s family that he’s open to signing with them for next season — if there is a season. The NBA’s labor agreement expires June 30, and that’s an issue for Rubio, the Wolves’ 2009 first-round draft pick who could continue playing for FC Barcelona in Spain if there is an NBA lockout. The 6-foot-4 point guard is averaging 5.5 points and 4.0 assists in 45 games this season.”